TUNISIA WANTS ITS TOURISTS BACK

Visitors are slow to return to the North African nation following the Jasmine Revolution

Considering Tunisia

Most of Tunisia is stable these days, though a U.S. State Department travel alert issued in January
(travel.state.gov/) cautions against travel near the Libyan border.

The alert noted that while most tourist and business centers are calm, “spontaneous and unpredictable events, such as work stoppages and demonstrations, still occur, a state of emergency remains in force, and curfews can be re-established on short notice.”

During eight days traveling in Tunisia, I experienced no security issues or harassment.

Le Cafe des Delices with its striking view of the Bay of Tunis has few tourists as guests these days. Karim Ben-Khelifa • New York Times photos

+Read Caption

Le Cafe des Delices with its striking view of the Bay of Tunis has few tourists as guests these days. Karim Ben-Khelifa • New York Times photos

Below the watchtower of the ancient fortress known as the Ribat, a panoramic view of the Tunisian city of Sousse unfolds. To the east lies the Mediterranean coast, where the Carthaginians moored their navy during epic battles with the Roman Empire. To the south and west, the labyrinthine passageways of the medina, the city’s old walled quarter, extend to the vanishing point amid a sea of tightly packed houses and minarets.

On a sunny January afternoon, I walked along the battlements of the empty fortress, peering through arrow slits into the streets where elderly Tunisian men in red caps and women in headscarves strolled. It occurred to me that I could see nearly everything in Sousse from this vantage point.

Except for one: fellow travelers.

Since arriving in Tunisia a few days earlier, I had barely glimpsed another tourist. True, it was low season. But the real reason, I knew, was the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011, when Tunisians rose up against an authoritarian regime and forced the flight of the longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Travelers, understandably, had gotten spooked. Tourism fell by more than 30 percent last year, even though, in the months after Ben Ali’s ouster, the country was generally calm. During my visit, hotel receptionists and restaurant servers repeatedly bemoaned the lack of tourists to me.

So I was pleasantly surprised when a German family of four interrupted my admittedly peaceful reverie atop the watchtower. They had been traveling by bus, admiring “the religion and the culture,” the father, Tobias Haug, told me, as he scanned the view. “Everyone has been very friendly,” he said, adding that friends in Germany had expressed concern before their departure. “They don’t know that the war’s been over for more than a year,” Haug said.

And so it is — mostly. As attention has turned from Tunisia to the far bloodier Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and beyond — many of them inspired by the Tunisian example — the North African nation is still trying to restore its image in the eyes of the world.

But for travelers, a visit to Tunisia right now offers a chance not only to witness this pivotal moment in the country’s history, but also to get a sense of the struggles and stakes of the Arab Spring in general. As dictators around the region fall or are challenged, Tunisia, while far from untroubled, offers a reassuring example of what might emerge from the wreckage. Elections in October produced results that would have been unimaginable during the Ben Ali years, when Islamist groups and dissent were smothered: a prime minister from a moderate Muslim party and a president with a résumé as a human rights campaigner.

A year after the revolution’s end, I took advantage of Tunisia’s well-developed tourism infrastructure — abundant hotels, clean restaurants and generally effective transportation — and began an eight-day journey by bus and train to see the country’s storied sights and take the pulse of its vital and suffering tourism sector.

In cities like Tunis, where public debate now finds an outlet in newspapers, exhibitions and street art, I found friendly people who were more than happy to share their ideas with travelers. Farther afield, in more tourism-dependent places like El Jem, with its gorgeous Roman ruins, locals expressed relief at the old regime’s demise, but also voiced an urgent need to start refilling empty hotels and restaurants. Everywhere, I found Tunisians to be laid-back and grateful to anyone willing to visit their country during this transitional time.

It rained my first day in Tunis. I leaned out my window in the rather dated Hotel Excel and peered down at Avenue Habib Bourguiba, site of the biggest protests. Lined with French colonial edifices and lively sidewalk cafes, the thoroughfare provided a crash course in modern Tunisian history, starting with its name. Habib Bourguiba, a Paris-educated lawyer, offered a passionate voice against French colonialism and helped win the country’s independence in 1956. The next year he became president and began modernizing the country, ensuring universal education and mandating equal rights for women. Polygamy was banned, and the veil discouraged.

But Bourguiba’s dictatorial tendencies wore out his welcome. Ben Ali, his prime minister, deposed him in 1987, but remained committed to education and women’s rights. His smothering police state and opulent lifestyle, however, led to his own downfall. In December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a young fruit vendor in a rural city, set himself ablaze to protest his economic misery and harassment by police, the whole nation caught fire.

Eager to learn more about the Jasmine Revolution, I boarded a commuter line for the seaside suburb of La Marsa. Art deco apartment buildings lined the palm-fringed beachfront. Along with neighboring Sidi Bou Said, a blue and white village of lovely small hotels and galleries, the neighborhood forms the artistic heart of the nation. Boutiques and galleries — notably the prestigious El Marsa gallery — are sprinkled along the streets, and every spring the Printemps des Arts, a two-week festival of Tunisian and international contemporary art and performance, is celebrated.

At the Mille Feuilles bookstore, an exhibition called “Degage!” offered a remarkable view of last year’s demonstrations in Tunis. Drawing its name from the marchers’ French-language refrain of “Get out!” the show featured photos of the masses surging along Avenue Habib Bourguiba. In one, a group of demonstrators — young, old, moneyed, impoverished, secular, religious — pressed toward the Interior Ministry, notorious for its detentions. The exhibition’s organizer, a well-coifed Tunisian woman named Leila Souissi, explained that the show would have been unthinkable before the fall of Ben Ali. “I would have been put in prison, and the gallery would have been shut down,” she said, adding, “We can say anything now.”

Two hours later, in Sousse, I fled the traffic-choked modern districts and took refuge in the walled quarter, where I checked into the Spartan but clean Hotel Medina and headed out, hoping to haggle for objects from local artisans. But it was Friday, the Sabbath, and the small shops and stalls were mostly shuttered.

The city was wide-awake the next morning. Honking, exhaust-spewing minivans and taxis were dropping off shoppers. Vendors at tightly clustered tables hocked their wares — Mickey Mouse socks, henna tattoos, cookware and shirts and shoes so cheaply made that only the faith of the wearer held them together. Nearby, stalls selling handicrafts — leather bags, chess sets, painted tea glasses — mixed with juice vendors and kebab grills.

A zigzag of slender passageways brought me to Dar Essid, a mansion that once belonged to the local Ottoman rulers of Tunisia. I had the place to myself and walked unhurriedly through rooms with crystal chandeliers and Oriental carpets. The ticket agent found me and pointed to a blank spot on the wall. A centuries-old marriage contract and a burial contract had been stolen during the chaos of the revolution. Still, he said, it was nothing compared with the larger thefts Tunisians had suffered. “Ben Ali stole 23 years of our lives,” he said.

Afterward, I ran up the stairs of the nearby Cafe des Nomades, eager to capture a sunset view from the roof terrace. The college-age overseer was startled. “You are the first client of the day,” he said. He served me mint tea, and we silently gazed at the fortress across the street. “Next month will be better, inshallah” — God willing.

Some people praise Sfax, Tunisia’s second-largest city and my next destination, for its archaeological museum. Others find charm — not easy to do in this rundown port — in the crenelated ramparts surrounding its medina. But as my train sliced through the brown landscape, I was drooling over the expectation of something else: baklava and brik.

For the worshipper of baklava, those honey-drenched layers of phyllo pastry, walnuts and pistachios, a pilgrimage to Patisserie Masmoudi in Sfax is essential. There, in the immaculate blue and white shop, white-clad women made baklava history around a decade ago by creating the world’s biggest version, a specimen that garnered a mention by Guinness World Records.

“It weighed around a ton and 150 kilos,” the cashier told me.

I contented myself with an assortment of their bite-size baklavas and other specialties, including the “Mosaique Pistache,” a small lush pistachio biscuit ringed on top with sliced pistachios and a crownlike spire of pine nuts.

For dinner, I searched outside the medina walls for another decades-old gastronomic institution, Restaurant Baghdad. Inside the spare white room, I ordered some Chateau Magon, a blend of syrah and merlot made in Tunisia, and dug into a classic brik, delivered by an elderly white-jacketed waiter. Under my fork, the crispy thin fried pastry shell, still hot, spilled out gooey egg mixed with scallions and tuna. Next up was ojja, a zesty tomato ragout larded with fried egg, green pepper, onion and chunks of red merguez sausage. The coda was a free shot of fiery date liqueur from the manager, who seemed relieved to glimpse a foreign face.

In the morning, when I tried to book a train ticket to the interior town of Metlaoui, I received some unwelcome news. “There are no more trains to that part of the country,” the agent told me. “The whole line was suspended two months ago.”

And so it was. No notice. No explanation. Another casualty of postrevolutionary Tunisia.

I crossed the city center, past graffiti-art posters depicting bloody protesters felled during the revolution, and trudged across an industrial no man’s land to the bus depot. Two hours later, I was on a bus to Metlaoui, rolling across a dry flatland.

Metlaoui is a godforsaken town that owes its existence to phosphate mines. Last year, anger over chronic unemployment exploded into strikes — another new form of free expression in the post-Ben Ali era — shutting down highways and railways at intervals. More alarming, street battles between two clans competing for scarce mining jobs killed more than 15 people last year.

I got off the bus and angled against the drizzle and darkness to my dilapidated room at the Hotel Selja, where I shivered under two blankets, half-ready to bolt back to Sfax. Yet, I repeated to myself, the town featured one of Tunisia’s most alluring attractions. In the morning I would be riding the rails of the Lezard Rouge.

This opulent train had been built in France in the early 20th century and given as a gift to the local Ottoman ruler of Tunisia. In recent decades it had been repurposed as a tourist train, offering two-hour journeys through some of the country’s most stunning landscapes. For almost all of 2011, as tourists abandoned Tunisia, the Lezard Rouge had been idle. Only in December did it start up again.

To my surprise, the train cars were brimming with travelers. Some 60 people in a Polish tour group lounged in the plush armchairs. French retirees and German families marveled at the flower-shaped lighting sconces. Soon the train was chugging through spiny hills and red-tinged mesas.

“Wow!” all the Poles shouted at once as we emerged from a tunnel into a deep gorge with soaring rock walls. Leaning out a window across from me, Mi-Yun Kim, from Seoul, snapped photos. She had seen the Lezard Rouge on a Korean television program, she said, and decided to take a solo trip around Tunisia.

What did her family and friends think of her plan, I asked.

“They all said, ‘Why do you want to go to Tunisia?’ ” recalled Kim. “They said, ‘Are you sure it’s not dangerous?’

“So I checked the Internet,” she continued as the sublime countryside rushed past. Her research brought welcoming news. “The revolution is over. It’s safe.”